The Top IT Trends for 2012

In keeping with our new year's tradition, we have compiled our list of the top technology trends for 2012. We scanned the available data, reviewed our previous predictions and made some leaps of faith. We are optimistic about the economy and expect many delayed IT expenditures to be completed this year. Advances in business technology continue their steady progression with many smaller businesses adopting leading edge technologies. This year will be interesting for consumer electronics. Maybe Steve Jobs left his next great invention in the Apple pensieve.

Local Data Centers

As Cloud Computing gains acceptance and market share, more business will move their equipment and applications to the cloud. Companies will look for neighborhood data centers that are accessible and provide boutique services. This provides an opportunity for IT service providers and managed service providers (MSPs) because smaller businesses will be looking for help in managing their collocated equipment and cloud applications. Many small businesses are accustomed to contracting IT services rather than maintaining in-house IT expertise and will look for service providers that can meet their changing IT model.

mCommerce

Mobile commerce is not only for impulsive buyers, but for smart, savvy shoppers looking for the best deal. The 2011 holiday season broke all records for mCommerce and this will continue as increasing numbers of merchants and consumers embrace mobile applications. Powerful processors will give handhelds a big boost in acceptance for those that have been reluctant to adopt the technology. Near field communication (NFC) will take off as applications are developed that use NFC for everything from sharing contact information to reading garment labels to purchasing anything with the swipe of your phone. In 2012, if you are in the consumer market - become an expert in NFC and mCommerce.

Speech Recognition

This could be a breakout year for speech and voice technologies. Speech recognition has been used by medical and legal for years and widespread acceptance is just around the corner for all types of businesses. As mobile device users embrace speech recognition for on-the-go computing, they will bring this technology into the office for a variety of efficiency improvements.

Handhelds Replace Laptops

With more powerful CPUs, handhelds can replace many of the features of laptops. The keyboard and screen size continue to be obstacle but projection and foldable technology will bridge the gap. One day we will think and our computer (probably won't be called a computer) will translate our thoughts into input and output, but in the meantime virtual docking stations will be used to interface with our analog (hands and eyes) systems.

Another Social Media Surge

With Google+ claiming that it will have 400 million members by the end of 2012, we are expecting another surge as social media expands its audience. Online aficionados will continue to be plagued with spam and scams, but new strategies will emerge to catch and isolate the offenders. The number of users and the average time spent online will increase, but there are too many platforms for the market. Users will consolidate around the most beneficial and productive sites. Facebook may take over the world in 2012, but then again it may not.

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Privacy Policy to IP Address for Your Personal Website to Prevent from Abusers

Creating a website can be as fast as five to ten minutes. Working on details can be very tedious. However, making the website simple can be as short as a couple of minutes. Wasting time on building internet sites can be fun as well. Making it truly awesome can create more visitors to log on to it every now and then. Friends will appreciate your effort in making such artistic creation. Personal websites can be accessed by those whom you personally know. Or else, it may be accessed depending on the location of your website. This is dependent upon the web hosting service provider used or else the type of IP Address and domain. Whichever reasons that is considered it serves the same purpose.

Personal websites are quite dangerous. On the website, relevant information you have about you are contained on it. Images of you and your loved ones can be accessed too. Different blogs may be read by millions of people who have access to the internet. For this reason, security about your individuality can be known.

The danger in owning a personal website can be that various people can pretend to be you. This is especially true with celebrities, actors, models, politicians and other known personalities. There are great advantages we can get in acquiring such program in protection to our location and identity. This will preserve as a sort of protection to our safety and privacy. We deserve such respect and information of privacy. How much more of an individual who know nothing about internet protection?

Many take advantage of the internet. This is also true with many IP address abusers. They tend to get IP Addresses of certain website owners. If this is the case, you must employ IP Address Search for your own protection. You may locate the abuser and report to local police, if the hacker is only located on the same place. However, with more advanced IP Address Search, it could give specific details such as continent, country, state and city. Then, you can report the abuser to the web hosting company or else to the authorities so as to trace the scammer.

Email Checker device may also be employed. This is for those hate mails you receive. Having a personal website can create many people to send mails that may threaten you. Give yourself protection from the anonymous haters by getting their info through Email Checker devices.

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To Enable Remote Connections Via TCP / IP for SQL Server Express

Networking protocol is disabled by default on SQL Server Express. Therefore, if we are to installs Express and select defaults, then SQL Server Express will only be accepting connections from the local computer where SQL Server was installed.

To enable SQL Server Express to accept connections from remote computers we need to do the following:

STEP 1: Enabling TCP / IP

We have to instruct SQL Server Express to listen on TCP / IP, this is done by following these steps:

• Run SQL Server Configuration Manager from the Programs menu - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 CTP
• Click on the node "Protocols for SQLEXPRESS"
• Right-click on the "TCP / IP" in the Protocols list and select "Enable"

STEP 2: To Browse or not to Browse

Next we need to determine whether we need the SQL Browser service running or not. The advantage of the passage of this service is that users who connect remotely do not need to specify a port in the connection string.

Note: For security reasons are advised not to run SQLBrowser service.

OPTION A:

If we want to always specify a TCP port when connecting (ie not using the SQL Browser service) do the following:

• Run SQL Server Configuration Manager from the Programs menu - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 CTP
• Click on the node "Protocols for SQLEXPRESS"
• Click on the child node "TCP / IP"
• Note the entry on the right panel for "IPAll", right click and select "Properties"
• Clear the "TCP Dynamic Ports"
• Fill Tcp Port number to use keystrokes to make remote connections, for example "1433"

In this step we have to restart SQL Server Express service, and we will be able to connect remotely to SQL Express. To check use SQLCMD commands from a remote computer and make connections as follows:

SQLCMD-E-S YourServer \ SQLEXPRESS, 1433

Sign "," in the name of the server means is the port number.

If there are errors, refer to Step 3.

OPTION B:

If we use the SQL Browser service perform the following steps:

Note:

We need to make changes to the registry key if using a TCP version.

To enable sqlbrowser service to listen on port 1434, the following registry key must be set to 1

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Microsoft SQL Server \ 90 \ SQL

Browser \ Ssrplistener

Then restart sqlbrowser service.

- Start the SQL Browser Service

STEP 3: Firewall ..?

At this point we should be able to connect remotely. If still not successful, there may be a firewall issue on the set on the computer where SQL Express is running. The following steps are used for setting the firewall in Windows XP SP2.

To enable the firewall to allow traffic to SQL Server Express:

• Run the Windows Firewall configuration tool from the Control Panel.
• Click on the Exceptions Tab
• Click on the "Add Programs." and select "sqlservr.exe" from the location where we install SQL Server Express.

We should be able to remotely connect. We can also set more stringent firewall by typing the port number that is allowed, for example in 1433 (well used to the configuration of Option A).

If we choose to use the SQL Browser service, we also have to add sqlbrowser service executable on the Exception tab because the program listens on UDP port 1434.

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Computational Engine

So you always thought that Web was all about searches and huge compilation of searches. You were right, but what about when you enter something in a search box and press enter. All you get is a set of links depicting what might be closest to what you had entered. What if you wished to do some calculations, or get info about something, and you need not go clicking on multiple links that the search page reveals.

WolframAlpha is for you

While WolframAlpha changes the way you hit the search box, it also does a hell lot of things for you. Be it be getting info about some day in the past, current info about a place, do mathematical sums and equations, knowin stock prices or whatever. WolframAlpha surely is a computational engine, rather than being what others are – ‘search engine’.

The Innovative engine is launched by Wolfram Research, and surely is something to look out for in the future. Who else now wants to solve those complex trigonometric equations when you have an engine to do it right away for you.

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Mozilla Firefox False Contains Trojan Virus Appears To Steal Password

A researcher of Sophos warned about a Trojan virus that threatens the users of Mozilla FireFox.
Researchers said the spread of this virus is by email. He mentioned that if there is a notification email with the subject 'New Version released' from email with address@FireFox.com is false. Email is a means of virus to infect Mozilla is already installed on your PC.

The email contains a message that to get the latest update of Mozilla FireFox, PC owners must download a small file which is a patch file. Next patch, said in an email message, it will fix the number of safety features and minor changes to the browser view.

The following is an email message in full:

"A FireFox software update is a quick download of small amounts of new code to your existing FireFox browser. These small patches can contain security fixes or other little changes to the browser to Ensure That you are using the best available version of FireFox.

"FireFox is Constantly evolving as our community finds Airways to make it better, and As We adjust to the latest security threats. Keeping your FireFox up-to-date is the best way to make-sure That you are using the smartest, fastest and. most importantly. safest version of FireFox available.

"A FireFox update Will not Make any changes to your bookmarks, saved passwords or other settings. However, there is a possibility That some of your Add-ons won.t IMMEDIATELY be compatible with new updates. "

At the bottom of the email, there is a link that refers to the address btopenworld.com. This is actually an executable file is an installer for Mozilla FireFox 5.0.1 with password Stealer. This virus will try to divert the attention of PC owners, while the virus is still working underground.

image source : Mozilla FireFox Browser

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M-DISC DVD Substitute Capable of Storing the Data Lifetime

For those of you who have important files and want to store it in a very long time, will probably be delighted with the M-DISC. This tool ensures the security of your data for life, there will be no such thing as corrupted data or other errors.

For now, M-DISC only provides write only, no M-DISC that provides features re-writable. Nevertheless, Mileniata company that produces M-DISC sure this tool will be sold in the market, because they guarantee that the stored data will be able to continue to read for life.

In collaboration with Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc., Milleniata will work together to make M-READY DVD drives that function to write data into the M-DISC. This tool can store up to 4.7 GB of data. M-DISC planned to be sold at USD 2.99, or about 25 thousand dollars per chip.

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Dynamic DNS (Domain Name System)

Every computer on the Internet require at least an IP address to be able to communicate with others. But the number of IP addresses is limited and the amount the longer wane quickly. IPv6 is designed to solve this problem but is still not commonly used. So, the ISP currently considers IP addresses as the invaluable resources and should be used with the thrifty possible. To make use of IP addresses with efficient, ISPS use dynamic IP address on the dial-up customers. That means every time a customer connect, he or she will get a different IP address. Usually this is not a problem on the activity as a client, but the entire application server may not work properly. It is similar to his situation if your phone number changes every day, your colleagues will be hard-pressed to call you.
Dynamic DNS is a method/protocol/network service that provides the capability for a networked device, such as a router or computer system using the Internet Protocol Suite, to notify a Domain Name System (DNS) name server to change, in real time, the active DNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.

A popular application of dynamic DNS is to provide a residential user's Internet gateway that has a variable, often changing, IP address with a well known hostname resolvable through standard DNS queries. This kind of dynamic DNS is commonly referred to as 'DynDNS', after a popular internet service of that name. It is accomplished via queries to especially formatted http/https URLs. Neither the format of these URLs nor the returned response codes is standardized. It is almost exclusively used on public networks, i.e. the internet, and does not require a user to run their own nameservers.

The standardized method of dynamically updating nameserver records is prescribed by RFC 2136, commonly known as 'Dynamic DNS Update' or 'DDNS'. Unlike the DynDNS-type updates, RFC 2136 is a protocol in its own right, with its own security mechanisms, and for use with managed nameservers. While RFC 2136 supports all DNS record types (including zone and user), it is most commonly used for dynamic hosts. In this form it is used primarily as an extension of the DHCP system, and in which the authorized DHCP servers register the clients' records with the nameservers (Windows servers are an exception: by default, Windows servers only register 'A' records and the DHCP clients are expected to register the reverse pointers). This form of support for RFC 2136 is provided by a plethora of client and server software, including those that are components of most current operating systems. Support for RFC 2136 is also an integral part of many directory services, including LDAP and Windows' Active Directory domains.

Solution

Dynamic DNS will direct a static hostname (eg: domainname.com) even if his IP address changes. All it takes is you have to install an email program that verify a fake POP3 email address periodically. It is necessary to inform an IP address when the DNS server dynamic service.

Application

So, how dynamic DNS can be useful? There are many applications that can make use of static IP addresses.

The File Transfer

Transfer files over the Internet is not always a simple thing, especially if the file is very large. Smaller-sized files of 10 MB is hardly likely to be sent via email, almost the entire email server will reject an email that its size is too large. There is also no efficient way, the file will swell in size if sent via email. Upload the file to your hosting account is sometimes not possible because of limited disk space, and it also will take twice as much of the course.

With dynamic DNS you can transfer those files directly from the two dial-up account without the need for a static IP address. Call a host by using the dynamic DNS and other hosts download or upload a file is by using FTP.

The Administration Remotely :

Give the address of the dynamic DNS to your home computer and the remote administration software installing. If you leave your computer on and connected to the Internet, then you will be able to control it from your workplace, Internet cafes, or anywhere with Internet access.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

If the Office you are still using dial-up accounts, usually it is hard to do because you don't know the VPN IP address. With dynamic DNS you and your employees can connect remotely to your office network, even if the IP address of the Internet is changing.

Audio and Visual Communication

With software such as Microsoft ® Windows ® NetMeeting ® or other software that is compatible, you can receive audio or video call. With dynamic DNS your friends will be able to call you by using an address such as you.example.com

Webcam and Surveillance of the Home

With a webcam and a web server software, you can publish the pictures live to the Internet. With dynamic DNS you can easily announce the address to your colleagues. This way you can also use the webcam as your home surveillance system, so you can monitor the home, family, and others while you are in the Office.

In the initial stages of the Internet addressing of hosts on the network was achieved by static translation tables that mapped hostnames to IP addresses. The tables were maintained manually in form of the hosts file. The Domain Name System brought a method of distributing the same address information automatically online through recursive queries to remote databases configured for each network, or domain. Even this DNS facility still used static lookup tables at each participating node. IP addresses, once assigned to a particular host, rarely changed and the mechanism was initially sufficient.
However, the rapid growth of the Internet and the proliferation of personal computers in the workplace and in homes created the substantial burden for administrators of keeping track of assigned IP addresses and managing their address space. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) allowed enterprises and Internet service providers (ISPs) to assign addresses to computers automatically as they powered up. In addition, this helped conserve the address space available, since not all devices might be actively used at all times and addresses could be assigned as needed.
This feature required that DNS servers be kept current automatically as well. The first implementations of dynamic DNS fulfilled this purpose: Host computers gained the feature to notify their respective DNS server of the address they had received from a DHCP server or through self-configuration.

Some examples are complex and may require experts.

image source: supporteasydns.com

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Cluster Computing

A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely thus in many respects forming a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and availability over that of a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability.

High-availability clusters (also known as failover clusters) are implemented primarily for the purpose of improving the availability of services that the cluster provides. They operate by having redundant nodes, which are then used to provide service when system components fail. The most common size for an HA cluster is two nodes, which is the minimum requirement to provide redundancy. HA cluster implementations attempt to use redundancy of cluster components to eliminate single points of failure.

Load-balancing clusters

Load-balancing is when multiple computers are linked together to share computational workload or function as a single virtual computer. Logically, from the user side, they are multiple machines, but function as a single virtual machine. Requests initiated from the user are managed by, and distributed among, all the standalone computers to form a cluster. This results in balanced computational work among different machines, improving the performance of the cluster systems.

Often clusters are used primarily for computational purposes, rather than handling IO-oriented operations such as web service or databases. For instance, a cluster might support computational simulations of weather or vehicle crashes. The primary distinction within computer clusters is how tightly-coupled the individual nodes are. For instance, a single computer job may require frequent communication among nodes: this implies that the cluster shares a dedicated network, is densely located, and probably has homogenous nodes. This cluster design is usually referred to as Beowulf Cluster. The other extreme is where a computer job uses one or few nodes, and needs little or no inter-node communication. This latter category is sometimes called "Grid" computing. Tightly-coupled compute clusters are designed for work that might traditionally have been called "supercomputing". Middleware such as MPI (Message Passing Interface) or PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) permits compute clustering programs to be portable to a wide variety of clusters.

There are commercial implementations of High-Availability clusters for many operating systems. The Linux-HA project is one commonly used free software HA package for the Linux operating system. The LanderCluster from Lander Software can run on Windows, Linux, and UNIX platforms.

Clustering can provide significant performance benefits versus price. The System X supercomputer at Virginia Tech, the 28th most powerful supercomputer on Earth as of June 2006, is a 12.25 TFlops computer cluster of 1100 Apple XServe G5 2.3 GHz dual-processor machines (4 GB RAM, 80 GB SATA HD) running Mac OS X and using InfiniBand interconnect. The cluster initially consisted of Power Mac G5s; the rack-mountable XServes are denser than desktop Macs, reducing the aggregate size of the cluster. The total cost of the previous Power Mac system was $5.2 million, a tenth of the cost of slower mainframe computer supercomputers. (The Power Mac G5s were sold off.)

The central concept of a Beowulf cluster is the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computers to produce a cost-effective alternative to a traditional supercomputer. One project that took this to an extreme was the Stone Soupercomputer.

However it is worth noting that Flops (floating point operations per second), aren't always the best metric for supercomputer speed. Clusters can have very high Flops, but they cannot access all data in the cluster as a whole at once. Therefore clusters are excellent for parallel computation, but much poorer than traditional supercomputers at non-parallel computation.

JavaSpaces is a specification from Sun Microsystems that enables clustering computers via a distributed shared memory.

Due to the increasing computing power of each generation of game consoles, a novel use has emerged where they are repurposed into High-performance computing(HPC) clusters. Some examples of game console clusters are Sony PlayStation clusters and Microsoft Xbox clusters. It has been suggested on a news website that countries which are restricted from buying supercomputing technologies may be obtaining game systems to build computer clusters for military use.

The first commercial clustering product was ARCnet, developed by Datapoint in 1977. ARCnet was not a commercial success and clustering per se did not really take off until Digital Equipment Corporation released their VAXcluster product in 1984 for the VAX/VMS operating system. The ARCnet and VAXcluster products not only supported parallel computing, but also shared file systems and peripheral devices. The idea was to provide the advantages of parallel processing, while maintaining data reliability and uniqueness. VAXcluster, now VMScluster, is still available on OpenVMS systems from HP running on Alpha and Itanium systems.

The GNU/Linux world supports various cluster software; for application clustering, there is Beowulf, distcc, and MPICH. Linux Virtual Server, Linux-HA - director-based clusters that allow incoming requests for services to be distributed across multiple cluster nodes. MOSIX, openMosix, Kerrighed, OpenSSI are full-blown clusters integrated into the kernel that provide for automatic process migration among homogeneous nodes. OpenSSI, openMosix and Kerrighed are single-system image implementations.

Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 based on the Windows Server platform provides pieces for High Performance Computing like the Job Scheduler, MSMPI library and management tools. NCSA's recently installed Lincoln is a cluster of 450 Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade servers running Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.This cluster debuted at #130 on the Top500 list in June 2006.

Another example of consumer game products being added to high-performance computing is the Nvidia Tesla Personal Supercomputer workstation, which gets its processing power by harnessing the power of multiple graphics accelerator processor chips.

Algorithmic skeletons are a high-level parallel programming model for parallel and distributed computing which take advantage of common programming patterns to hide the complexity of parallel and distributed applications. Starting from a basic set of patterns (skeletons), more complex patterns can be built by combining the basic ones.

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The Consequences Linked Servers On The LAN (Line Access Network)

There are some consequences that should be done if we are to our servers in the LAN can be recognized by the user on the Internet. Servers are generally want to open to the Internet usually primarily to send and receive email from/to the Internet.

Some small entrepreneurs may be building a Web server on the LAN. Usually for traffic is great, the Web server would be better placed on hosting services on the Internet.

There are some fundamental difficulties which led to the laying of LAN servers to be accessed by users on the Internet is becoming a bit difficult, namely:

    -   Router ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) usually serves as a NAT (Network Address Translation)/firewall between the network LAN to the Internet. Consequently the only traffic from the LAN network to do the Internet but not too easy for the traffic from the Internet to a server on the LAN.

     -   ADSL Networks generally use a dynamic IP address. The consequences will be more difficult for users on the Internet to find out the IP address of the router ADSL because is not fixed.

Surely there is a solution that allows us to put a server behind a router ADSL. These solutions include:

     -    Use the services of Dynamic DNS. In principle, a Dynamic DNS service allows all routers on the Internet/machine.

That does not have a static IP, dynamic IP only has the always fickle, can enlist the services of Dynamic DNS and register the hostname to a dynamic IP address. So that's very simple, because the hostname can be fixed with a Dynamic DNS service so users on the Internet no longer need to know the IP address is dynamic (changing) to contact ADSL router, but enough to know hostname listed through services of Dynamic DNS.

    -    Because the servers we build usually are behind a firewall or NAT mechanism built-in router   ADSL, we should use the ADSL router at facilities that allow all traffic that is directed to the Internet and our server so that it can forward the ADSL router directly and do not run any services over ADSL router. By using the facilities that allow for forwarding all packets to the ports on the ADSL router gets redirected to the server on the LAN, making LAN server is open to all connect to Intrenet. This facility is known as the DeMiliterized Zone (DMZ). Consequently we have to make a strong defense on our servers in order to be safe and Internet attacks.

Other means that may be done so that our servers are relatively safe and Internet attacks is to open certain ports, for example, email SMTP, POP3 or IMAP that is opened. That way, only traffic to a specific port that will be forward to servers on the LAN. Other defences are performed by the firewall on ADSL router we use. This technique is known as port forwarding.

image source: icomsoftsolution.com

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